


Firelight

by draculard



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Abuse, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Magical Corruption, Parasites, Psychological Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 13:10:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19442116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Some nights, the Beast follows the Woodsman out of the woods.





	Firelight

The lantern flickers in the corner, perched upon the windowsill. Sometimes, the Woodsman keeps it there while he sleeps so he can see it if he wakes in the night — so he can see it burning against the night, like a guardian keeping out the dark. Sometimes he keeps it on his bedside table, but when he does this, he stays awake for long hours letting the fire burn into his open eyes and blind him. 

Watching his daughter dance. Imagining he can see her in the flames.

Tonight, it’s on the windowsill, close enough that he can find comfort in its glow, far enough that he cannot see his daughter’s form, and he can pretend she can’t see him. 

That she can’t see the Beast in his bed.

* * *

There’s pleasure in the Unknown, but not for the Woodsman. He’s seen frogs singing in his ventures to the woods; he’s seen villages of people with no skin dancing together with their bones gleaming in the sun; he’s seen travelers with smiles on their faces playing pan pipes and walking so lightly their feet hardly seem to touch the ground.

He hasn’t felt it, himself. Not in years. What waits for the Woodsman is pain; when he seeks out the Edelwood trees and sets his ax against them, when he lifts the lantern for light and remembers what’s inside, when he hears the faint song of the Beast on the night air.

And when the Beast fills his doorway at night, when he feels the Beast’s mottled, squirming skin against his own, that pain becomes so intense he hardly knows how to define it. It’s impossible to distinguish between the strange heat of the Beast’s skin and his own burning nerves; every touch leaves behind it a stinging sensation which drives itself up the Woodsman’s arms, up his chest, up his neck, straight into his mind.

In the night, in the glow of the lantern, he looks at himself beneath the Beast, naked and scared, and sees holes eating their way through his skin. Sees the shining pink of exposed flesh, strangely bloodless and clean, sees woodlice and ticks crawling off the Beast’s skin and into his own wounds, disappearing into his body. 

He feels them, feels their little feet crawling through the network of muscle and blood vessels and bone laid bare across his body. He feels the Beast enter him and in a second the parasites are all forgotten, wiped away entirely by the new singing agony that washes through him. 

His eyes close — or his vision goes out — or he loses consciousness. And when he wakes there are threads of black eating at his eyes, and threads of black coursing through his bloodstream, as visible on his skin as bruises. 

He looks to the windowsill, but he cannot see the lantern.

* * *

In the morning, every morning, he tells himself,

_ It’s just a dream. _

Just like the lantern is a dream. Just like the Edelwood trees are a dream. He wakes up and his wounds have closed and left no trace behind — no scars, no pain, no sign at all that he’s been harmed. The black lines, like cracks on a butterfly’s wing, have disappeared, as well; his vision is clear.

Outside, the mill cranks and grinds its way through another circle. Inside, on the windowsill, his daughter burns.

And the Beast wasn’t there last night, the Woodsman tells himself, but he can still feel parasites crawling in his veins. 


End file.
